Documents reveal holes in Bush's military record

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A new examination of George Bush's military records has found that he twice failed to fulfil his service obligations, despite signing documents pledging to meet them or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of the US President's military records, White House officials insisted that the records proved Mr Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

However, a reassessment of the records by The Boston Globe shows that he fell well short of his duty - first, when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973.

On both occasions he pledged to fulfil his commitments or face active duty. But he did neither.

On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Harvard Business School, Mr Bush signed a document that declared: "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilisation augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months."

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But he never signed up with a new unit. In 1999, a Bush spokesman, Dan Bartlett, told The Washington Post that Mr Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, he now concedes. "I must have misspoke," said Mr Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director.

Early in his National Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Mr Bush signed a "statement of understanding" pledging to achieve "satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty and 15 days of annual active duty.

"I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads.

Yet Mr Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service at all for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.

Flight records newly acquired under the US Freedom of Information Act have also revealed Mr Bush, a lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, was ranked 22nd in his 1969 class of 53 pilots and flew more than 336 hours in a fighter jet before letting his pilot status lapse and missing a key readiness drill.

The Pentagon and the US President's election campaign have claimed for months that all records detailing his fighter pilot career had been made public, but officials said they had found two dozen new records concerning his training and flight logs after the Associated Press filed a lawsuit and lodged new requests under public records laws.

Mr Bush's last flight was in April 1972, which is consistent with pay records that show he performed no service at all between April and October of that year, despite signing his "statement of understanding". Mr Bush skipped a required medical exam that cost him his pilot's status in August 1972.

These details emerged as a US pollster predicted the President's Democratic challenger, John Kerry, could still be clinging to a narrow lead in the US election race. A poll, by Zogby International, reflected the state of play in 20 swing states, and found that the surge in Mr Bush's support after last week's Republican national convention was less pronounced than the double-digits suggested in two weekend polls.

Those surveys, in Time and Newsweek, triggered alarm in the Democratic camp. But other surveys have since suggested the Bush convention "bounce" was much smaller and the contest remains a close one.

The Zogby poll says Mr Bush has made up ground in many of the 20 battleground states, but Senator Kerry retains a slim lead in most of them - enough to give him a majority in the electoral college if the vote were to be held now.

Meanwhile, the US Congressional Budget Office said the US deficit would hit a record $US422 billion ($610 billion) this year, even if Congress did not enact any of the extra tax cuts Mr Bush is seeking.